


Tasting the Air

by Relvetica



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Dubious Consent, Gen, Mind Control, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/pseuds/Relvetica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil only smiled that infuriating, bland smile of his and said, your father rues his day on this earth, that he would have sired as traitorous a wretch as you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tasting the Air

In those first days since returning to Baron, after Cecil had gone but before Rosa left, Kain found himself thinking back to when his father died. He didn't know why. It was something he tried to avoid thinking about. The king had taken him in, a surprisingly generous gesture to a family that was more military than aristocratic, and Kain remembered wondering in confusion if this meant he was now in line for the throne. The king already had a son, but he was adopted, too, and younger. Kain and Cecil had met but had never been particularly friendly; the king's strange sylph-like foundling was off-putting and weird, and when Kain found himself alone with him he tended to pick fights with him out of a vaguely panicked sense of self-preservation. When they became brothers, he told Cecil in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be friends. Cecil only smiled that infuriating, bland smile of his and said, your father rues his day on this earth, that he would have sired as traitorous a wretch as you.

Kain's eyes snapped open. He had fallen asleep at the commons table; he saw black scaled flesh sliding out the door, rounding the corner in the direction of the throne room.

When Rosa fled Baron a few days later, he watched her go from a turret and did nothing. What business of it was his? For a moment he faltered, and he couldn't quite grasp how he knew her. He groped blindly for a memory of her and found one: a summer's day not so many years ago, when he was trying to impress her by leaping up into a tree from the ground. Cecil had been there, too, and they both looked up at him with wide, impressed eyes. The presence of another boy called for cockiness, and after sufficient taunting from Kain and some ribbing from Rosa Cecil moved to awkwardly pull himself up into the lowest branch and clamber up after him. He'd been glad Rosa was watching this; first because of how Cecil lost all his grace when his feet left the ground and made Kain look that much better in comparison, and then because Cecil lost his footing a good way up and fell. He struck a branch on his way down, and it didn't even give under his weight. He just bounced off of it and struck the ground heavily, rolling to an unnaturally still stop below the tree. After that Kain's recollection was vague: he was on the ground immediately, turning Cecil over onto his back despite Rosa's shouts not to move him, and Cecil's eyes were wide and open and fixed on his. His torso was cracked like a jostled vase; from him seeped something black and slick, moving out over his arms under its own power. 

Kain watched as Rosa made it to the first line of trees at the northern forest's edge, and he was glad for her in a way he couldn't understand. A lot of things were like that now. He would have thoughts and wouldn't know where they came from. He shied away from them, his feelings of sickness around the king, and his odd alertness around Golbez. The king insisted that Golbez was not new, and that he'd been thinking of replacing Cecil with him for some time, and Kain nodded and agreed. Of course. Was a mage a good choice to head their air force? Of course. Golbez's shadow dragon slipped and slithered up the stairwells of Baron's castle like a snake in a rabbit hole, tasting the air with a slender tongue and watching Kain with flat eyes. It seemed to be everywhere. Maybe it was following him, watching him while its master was occupied. Kain didn't care. When his mind was clearer he would wonder if Golbez didn't have more important things to keep track of than him, but for the most part he didn't care.

Another memory came to him unbidden, when he was doing his best to think of nothing at all -- that winter afternoon when he and Cecil had sneaked down into the castle's cellars and slipped into the wine storage with a stolen key. Neither of them were particularly adept drinkers, but Cecil much less so than he, and it had been charming how drunk Cecil became on only half of a shared bottle. He was so pale that his lips often looked nearly blue, but the wine had stained them red. Kain had found that distracting, that single feature so sweetly out of place. When the bottle was finished Cecil set it aside and clutched Kain by his collar, pulling him forward to kiss him, and Kain tasted the wine again as he was twisted around and pressed down against the stone floor. Cecil swung a leg over Kain's hips to straddle him, and Kain finally, sluggishly found it within himself to object. Isn't this what you wanted? Cecil asked. Isn't this why you brought me down here? No, Kain said. No. This isn't what happened. Of course it is, Cecil said, you don't remember because you don't like to think about that day. Kain shook his head. Nothing happened, nothing like this, we were just drunk and stupid and together. You're my best friend. I wouldn't do this.

Would you leave your best friend for dead? Cecil asked.

Kain's eyes opened, and nothing changed. He was looking up into the same green eyes, the same terrible grin; the black snake's coils tightened against his throat, and slender white fingers brushed his jaw before moving up to knot themselves in his hair. Isn't this what you wanted?

"Yes," Kain whispered.


End file.
